Haven’t heard from us from a while? That’s because we’re hard at work to bring you CUSEC 2010. Once again, it’s taking place in Montreal in January, conveniently at a time before school gets too busy.

But we need your help: we need a logo. Who better than to shape the look of CUSEC than the people who will have to stare at it the most: you.

What you need to capture

Our theme for next year is CUSEC 2010: GOTO 10. It’s a reboot theme where we’ll go back to the basics of software engineering and examine if concepts from the past can help us design for the future.

As trends in software come and go, we find ourselves returning to the concepts from the past. As the popularity of cloud computing, dynamic languages and embedded devices continues to grow, we’re experiencing a re-emergence of the same themes and constraints that were the norm not so long ago. It is in this context that CUSEC 2010 seeks to explore what solutions from the past can be used for the challenges of tomorrow

At minimum, the logo should have:

• “CUSEC 2010”
• “GOTO 10”
• some sort of symbol that you think represents the theme.

Some ideas you might want to play around with:

• BASIC code
• retro fonts
• neon colours

Here are a few examples from previous years:

We like the layout of the CUSEC2009 logo where the symbol sits next to the name and theme which are stacked on top of each other.

A few requirements

What’s a software engineering contest without a few requirements. Here are ours:

• Should incorporate the text elements mentioned above
• Should look good on a t-shirt
• Can’t rely on many colours. Ideally, this should be able to print in black and white
• Should still look distinctive at smaller sizes

What’s in it for you?

Why should you give up your precious time to help us out? Well

• Free admission to CUSEC2010

This alone should motivate you to give it a shot. But wait — there’s more:

• Invitation to one of the speaker dinners
• Copies of our posters and an extra t-shirt or two

How to submit

Shoot us an email at info@cusec.net with your image file by Sunday, July 5th before midnight. Please send us your submission in an easy to consume format (JPEG, PNG, etc) but we’ll ask for a vector version later.

Looking forward to seeing your submission!

This was originally posted at Geekflex: http://www.geekflex.net/2009/03/13/cusec-2009-retrospective-part-4-money/

Many attendees noticed that the career fair was drastically toned down this year compared to previous years, and that we also had fewer sponsors. One of the main reasons for that was the stock market taking a serious hit in early October. A lot of the companies we had been negotiating with — even those that have previously attended CUSEC (and loved it) — could no longer afford to attend.

The way sponsorship works at CUSEC is fairly straightforward. We put together a sponsorship package which we send out to companies that we think will be interested in. The package is just a document gives a brief idea of what CUSEC is, who the delegates are and what our previous sponsors have said. It also includes a list of sponsorship “levels”, each of which has a price tag associated with it. Each level also includes a number of benefits such as: a booth during the career fair, the ability to supply bag inserts, their logo displayed prominently and having conference rooms “named” after them.

Most companies are willing to pay a significant sum to have access to top notch students, and those are the kinds of students we have at CUSEC. That’s not just hearsay. The feedback we get from our sponsors is astounding. They are extremely pleased with the recruits they get from CUSEC. Many of my friends found their full time jobs through CUSEC, as did I. As Tim Bray said:

everybody I know in the biz is hungry for talent, and here are 350 kids, a high proportion of them about to graduate, who care enough about what they’re doing to take the trouble to go to a three-day conference including a Saturday. Talk about self-selecting good candidates.

We begin negotiating with companies in the late summer and early fall. By October we begin to finalize the contracts, and by November we get them signed. The money starts to roll in during December and January, which is all well and good since most of our expenses aren’t due until the conference actually starts. We’re actually very flexible with how we work with our sponsors. The costs of our packages can be mixed and matched with merchandise to give out at the closing ceremonies, or a service that’s provided to us free of charge.

This year, we were negotiating with a record number of companies. We started off incredibly strong and had garnered a lot of interest. As per our normal operating procedure we expected to finalize the contracts starting in October … then poof. A lot of companies lost a lot of money. Hiring freezes were everywhere, and few had the budget to spend on recruiting. And believe me, many of these companies tried to dig pretty deep, too. Their HR departments know how valuable it is to recruit at CUSEC. But there’s a limit to how much you can compromise. The danger is that if you make a special deal with one sponsor, you run the risk of another sponsor finding out about it. Then you could up in a situation where Initrode complains that Initech paid less money but got a bigger booth, or more exposure, or something like that. Maintaining a trustworthy relationship with our sponsors is something very important to us, so we make sure to treat them equally and fairly.

Suffice it to say our sponsorship packages aren’t cheap. They provide a huge chunk of our funding. Conferences are expensive to run, and CUSEC is no exception. The money has to come from somewhere, and if it all came from delegates it would cost a hell of a lot more than $60 per person. Here are just some of the factors that go into the costs.

Booking the conference centre. Even though January is a relatively slow season, this ain’t cheap. We need two conference rooms and open space for three full days (and nights). This includes tons of hidden costs that go beyond simply holding the rooms: there need to be a Maitre D’ to oversee the event; there needs to be internet on site, since the hotel’s basic wireless can’t handle so many connections; staff needs to be hired to deliver and clean up the coffee, keep the water jugs filled, and all these other little details.

Coffee during transitions. Yup, each coffee break costs money. And these are usually per-person charges (and it’s more expensive than Starbuck’s. No, seriously). We have to estimate how many people will drink coffee (or tea) and order enough for that amount. We usually underestimate, because if we fail to reach the minimum then we get charged for the excess. This is how conference centres operate. In addition to that, every conference centre I’ve ever known has a rule against bringing in outside food. This is both because the centres’ caterers maintain a monopoly on the food served on site, and also because the centre is responsible should anyone come down with food poisoning. So we can’t simply run to Tim Horton’s and bring back a few giant jugs of coffee. (Likewise, we also can’t run to Subway and bring back 400 sandwiches.)

Keynote speakers are the foundation of the conference. We make sure to treat them very well. If we’ve invited a keynote speaker, we will pay for their transportation to Montreal, their stay at the hotel, and for their food during the conference. We don’t pay the keynote speakers to speak. Instead, we cover their expenses so that it shouldn’t cost them anything. This is a significant portion of our budget, but it is certainly not one we’re willing to compromise. The experience we give our speakers is what encourages more speakers to come, and the wonderful things our speakers have said makes it all worth it. We want to bring the best speakers we possibly can, and this is a sure-fire way to ensure that they have few excuses for not coming.

Miscellaneous little things that all add up: t-shirts, nametags, printing the proceedings, printing up posters to display on campuses, and various incidentals that happen while the conference is running. These may not seem like much but believe me they add up. The only perks that organizers get as far as our budget is concerned are a complimentary stay in the hotel as well as lunch and dinner all three days. We’re pretty strict with what we’ll reimburse our organizers for, and in fact we even have strict limits on how much our meals can cost. (Also, CUSEC will never pay for alcohol. That’s what my credit card is for… :-S)

Banquets, Cocktails, etc., which we didn’t have this year, because we simply couldn’t afford them. A banquet isn’t cheap. You need to hire caterers, book a ballroom, pay for the staff, bar, and all the stuff that goes along with it. We made a decision very early on that unless we could afford to do a banquet properly this year, we weren’t going to do one. The banquet in CUSEC 2008 was a disaster. Some people were lucky enough to get their food in a reasonable amount of time, while others (like yours truly) were still awaiting their soup while people kept harassing them “Hey, Skrud! Where are we going drinking tonight!?!” and then by the time I finally got my meal and got out of the restaurant, the bar I had sent everyone to was so packed that I couldn’t even get in. Never again. (Note I am most certainly not the only one to have had a poor experience with that banquet. It got many more complaints than praise.)

A proper banquet is expensive. To hold it in a hotel or conference centre, you’re required to use that venue’s own caterers. They don’t come cheap. Would any of you have been satisfied if your seven-course meal consisted of seven slightly differently shaped lettuce leaves? This is also why CUSEC doesn’t provide catered lunches. If we wanted to hold the banquet elsewhere, such as at an external banquet hall where we could find our own caterers, then we’d be stuck with the trouble of getting people there and back. Banquet halls that aren’t in hotels or conference centres are also not usually downtown. This would mean adding the cost of hiring a shuttle bus, or paying for metro passes for everyone.

We were hoping to compromise and provide a cocktail instead of a banquet. Always thinking, we knew a cocktail would be less expensive. We could provide, say a single drink ticket (good for alcohol or a non-alcoholic beverage) and make the rest of the event a cash bar. If we had the extra cash, maybe some h’ors d’oeuvres as well. While it would’ve cost us less than half of a swanky banquet, the lower amount sponsorship this year meant that we had to cut it.

Sponsorship is a lot of work, and we had to stick to our guns and be incredibly persistent to get even the small number of sponsors you saw at the career fair. Our Director of Sponsorship, Juan, put in an incredible amount of effort and an astronomical amount of time to make it happen, cold-calling companies if she needed to, leaving voicemails and calling back, never taking “no” for an answer. CUSEC 2009 would never have happened if it weren’t for her efforts. Next time you see her, make sure to give her a hug.

This post was originally published on Geekflex at http://www.geekflex.net/2009/03/12/cusec-2009-retrospective-part-3-the-venue/

One of the toughest things about planning CUSEC 2009 was finding the right combination of conference centre and hotel. Ideally we were hoping to hold the conference in the same hotel that delegates were staying in, minimizing the distance that people had to travel in the morning. We searched the city high and low, trying to negotiate not only for the best rates in terms of conference space, but also for a hotel that would give us a discounted room rate.

To complicate matters further, CUSEC is dual-tracked. That means that except for keynote speakers, there would be two presentations going on simultaneously. This meant that we’d need to have two separate rooms. One big room that splits in two doesn’t work well because of the fact that it takes time to set up the barrier, and you’d have to have to sets of AV equipment which can be linked together for keynotes and then separated for dual-tracked sessions. We need two separate rooms. We also need room to host a career fair and for students to mingle.

Those of you that have attended CUSEC more than once will know that CUSEC has been growing steadily. In 2008, we had way too many people standing at the back. We had to add more chairs at the last minute. A lot of people have asked me why we didn’t return to that venue and the reason is, quite simply, the fact that they don’t have enough room for us. Those conference rooms we had in 2008? Yeah, they actually have a posted capacity of 280 people. We were well over 300 people jam packed in there. We were anticipating even more growth this year, and we knew that returning to that venue wouldn’t work for us again.

We explored nearly every hotel in the city and met with many of their managers. (And by “we” I mean that the bulk of the work was done by our Director of Logistics, Claudiu, and our Director of Events, Kyle.) A lot of the places we checked out which had adequate conference space also had prohibitively expensive hotel rooms, and we wouldn’t have accepted a higher price than $100 per night for quad occupancy. Yes, our students crash four people to a room ¹. The good news is that booking some fifty rooms in a hotel during an otherwise low-occupancy period is a bargaining chip. And we got some pretty good offers, but none of them were good enough. We had to play hardball. (Again, by “we”, I mean Claudiu. The man is a star.)

I’ll spare you the grimy details, stories of near-success and near-failure — since I obviously can’t mention the names of all the people and hotels we dealt with. Eventually, we had to give up on the idea of hosting CUSEC in the same hotel that housed delegates, since we simply couldn’t work out the numbers. Suffice it to say that the venue we nailed this year had everything we needed (and in fact, had previously hosted CUSEC as well). They even offered us hotel rooms at a very inexpensive rate, but unfortunately they had very few rooms with two double beds, and so we opted to stay in the hotel across the street. If you’re wondering why the cost of the hotel was more than $100 per night — well, we had a near-unanimous decision amongst all the head delegates to go for it anyway, since the next-best option was to stay at a hotel that was a good 10 minute walk away.

Unfortunately, our venue didn’t have as much room as last year for the career fair and mingling. We thought the atrium (where the four booths were set up) was enough space, but apparently not. It was too crowded. The reason we want the career fair in an open lobby area is so that it’s visible. Delegates will see the booths as they transition between the two rooms, and as they go get coffee. One of the consistent notes of feedback we get from our sponsors is that they like the fact that they’re visible and not shoved into an anterior conference room down the hallway from the main conference. Hallways are the devil. If a delegate has to walk down a hallway to get somewhere, he or she will very likely simply not go. You might disagree, but after years of attending these kinds of events this is what I’ve noticed. An advantage of not having many sponsors this year was that we managed to fit the ones we did have into such a cramped space.

This was the first year we were looking for a venue that could accommodate such a large number of people, and indeed we expect CUSEC to grow even more in the future. This year taught us a lot, and that will help next year’s team decide on a venue as well.

This was originally posted at http://www.geekflex.net/2009/03/11/cusec-retrospective-part-2-the-timing/

A lot of people complain about the fact that CUSEC is held on the second or third week of January. It’s cold in Montreal in January. We’ve had years where it’s been -40 degrees with the wind chill ¹, and some people find this tough to take. There are many good reasons to hold the conference in January, but the bottom line is it’s the best time to do it. That sounds like a subjective statement, but take a step back and seriously think about other possible times to hold the conference.

September and October are no good because they’re too early. This would also require that all of our promotion and advertising happens over the summer, when fewer people around to get pitched to ². Not to mention that these months are full of orientation activities, and the new students are so disoriented that you won’t be able to sell a single ticket to them. Most of them won’t have even learned “Hello, World” yet, and something like CUSEC will just seem massively intimidating.

November is an interesting month, because it tends to be between midterms and finals. In fact, the Impact National Conference tends to be held around this time each year. The reason I don’t think it’s particularly feasible for CUSEC, though, is that we would still be alienating the first-year students. Again, many of them will be learning to program for the first time. While CUSEC hasn’t been that technical in recent years, I think at least one full semester studying software engineering or computer science should be a pre-requisite for attending CUSEC. You’ll have at least some idea of what’s going on.

December is an obvious one, as is April. Two words: exams, vacation. Even for the students that don’t study very hard, December and April are busy months filled with studying and cramming and exam-taking. Once exams are over, a lot of students leave town and go on vacation, or home for the holidays. Hosting a conference during winter break means no one will show up.

February is a complicated month. Each school has it’s “Reading Week” in February. While it might seem like a good idea to host a conference when everyone is off school for a mid-term break, note that schools often have different weeks off. Even McGill and Concordia can’t agree on when their reading week should occur. ETS doesn’t even get a full week, but two days. To make matters worse, when students aren’t on their week-long breaks, February tends to be jam-packed with midterms.

March can be lumped in with November, except that there is a lot more going on in March. This is when most universities hold their award and special ceremonies, for example the Ritual of the Calling of an Engineer, when engineering students in Canada are betrothed with an Iron Ring. These happen at various times throughout the month, and we would certainly lose any final year students should CUSEC conflict with their ceremony. There are various other award and scholarship ceremonies that carry a higher obligation. Another reason we don’t hold CUSEC in March is to avoid conflict with CS Games, which is an event that has a high overlap of participants with CUSEC. Also National Engineering Week Month occupies most students in engineering programs during the entire first week of March. This year, the Canadian University Technology Conference is being held in March — this very week — and I know Concordia is not sending a delegation because it conflicts with their engineering student awards banquet.

Last but not least, January is when hotels and conference centres are the cheapest. As a student-oriented conference (and a non-profit organization), we have to make sure that we can keep our operating costs low enough so that students can actually afford to attend. In January, hotels and conference centres are so desperate for attention that they’ll make insane deals just to fill up their rooms and take whatever they can get. The summer months are prime tourism season. Hotel rooms easily double and sometimes even quadruple in cost. Despite the fact that most students won’t even be thinking of school, let alone an extra-curricular conference in summer.

Another question I often get with regard to the dates is Why does CUSEC run from Thursday to Saturday instead of from Friday to Sunday? Students have to miss two full days of class to come attend CUSEC, and then have nothing to do on Sunday. One reason for this is a logistical one that has to do with our speakers. The keynote speakers that present at CUSEC are very often coming from the opposite end of the continent. In order to make sure that the CUSEC experience runs as smoothly as possible, we make sure they have the full day on Sunday to travel back home — wherever that may be. In some cases — as in the people coming from British Columbia or California — travel will easily take them an entire day. We want the speakers to stick around for as much of the conference as possible, so we make sure they have Sunday free to travel back. It would suck if all the speakers left on the second day and only one or two were sticking around for the third.

Having Sunday off is also leaves the door open for students to stick around Montreal for an extra day of sightseeing and tourism which, believe it or not, is an option that a lot of delegates actually do take. It also allows for students have the time to travel back themselves so that they don’t have to miss class on Monday. Finally, Sunday is a mental-health day for the organizers. We need the time to de-stress, unwind and take in everything that’s happened. It might be a little selfish, but trust me — we need it.

This blog post is cross-posted from http://www.geekflex.net/2009/03/10/cusec-2009-retrospective-part-1-the-city/

This January marked the culmination of a year’s worth of hard work, as I was the co-chair of the Canadian University Software Engineering Conference (CUSEC). Throughout the organization process we had to make a lot of tough decisions. Overall, the conference was a huge success. Including our speakers and sponsors, we had over 400 people attending. The talks (I’m told) were amazing, and people felt inspired.

As with any large undertaking, some things we wanted to do inevitably got left out, and other things that we tried failed miserably. In this series of blog posts I want to share some of my experience from organizing CUSEC 2009. I’m not trying to defend the decisions that were made, but merely explaining the thoughts and reasoning behind them. The bottom line is that this was a learning experience for me, and I want to share what I’ve learned with you. I encourage you to discuss and leave constructive criticism in the comments.

This first installment is about why we hold CUSEC in Montreal.

You may have noticed that each year, with only one exception in 2005, CUSEC has been held in Montreal. I often get asked why we don’t move CUSEC around, specifically I’ve heard the question “Why not Toronto?” at least twice each year for as long as I can remember. There are a number of reasons we keep CUSEC firmly planted in Montreal, and why we will continue to do so for the foreseeable future.

The first reason is student density. Montreal has more post-secondary students per capita than any other major city in North America ¹. This includes four major engineering schools each with Software Engineering programs: Concordia, McGill, École de Technologie Supérieur, and École Polytechnique. Concordia alone sends more delegates than any other school, with over 70 students each year.

The second reason is that Montreal is fun, and it most certainly has that reputation. To the students coming from quieter university towns, CUSEC is a good excuse to come to Montreal and party. The one year CUSEC was held in Ottawa, attendance dropped tremendously, and the increased cost of transportation and lodging was enough to discourage Concordians from coming out in their usual numbers. The fact that CUSEC includes a trip to Montreal is actually a very big draw for a lot of students, and a lot of them like to take the time to tour the city while they’re out here.

Then there’s real reason we keep CUSEC in Montreal: The legal drinking age in Quebec is 18. If we were to host the conference in Ontario, a significant portion of potential delegates wouldn’t bother to attend — especially those students are still 18 years old and hail from Quebec. Why would they travel to spend a weekend at a conference and be forced to skip the inevitable parties?

CUSEC is primarily an educational conference, and it always will be. However, even though the main focus of the conference is on content, we take the fun factor very seriously. I strongly believe that you will learn more from sitting down and having a beer with one of our keynote speakers than you would from being lectured at. That’s why the pub night has become such a tradition. I would feel terrible for anyone who had to miss out on a social event like that simply because they were underage. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to meet and network and socialize with students from other schools (and something I don’t think we did a great job with this year, but more on that in a future post).

CUSEC 2009 was incontrovertibly awesome (good word, publicity guy!). You wouldn’t think it could get much better! But it can. And we need your help to make it happen!

The 2010 chairs have been chosen. They’re fantastic and they’ve both got a lot of experience with CUSEC. They’ll be fun to work with. Reason #1 to volunteer for CUSEC: It is fun. Lots and lots and lots of fun.

But it’s not just about fun. CUSEC is a great experience for over 400 passionate students. CUSEC organizers make a difference. Sometimes they change lives. That’s reason #2 to help organize CUSEC: You can help others and make our industry better.

Making a difference is swell, but let’s get back to selfish reasons, shall we? What’s in it for a potential organizer? Well, you know all that talk about the value of networking, extracurricular experience, and all that jazz? This is what they’re talking about. Working on CUSEC will sharpen your teamwork and leadership skills. You’ll meet and befriend some great people. Reason #3 to sign up: You’ll get better at life.

Nearly every CUSEC organizer alum will agree: It’s worth it.

So how can you help? Step 0: Email info@cusec.net and tell Andrew and Juan what you’re about and why you want to help. 

CUSEC Head Delegates publicize CUSEC on campus and organize delegation transport and lodging. Just think of the uncontrollable jealousy when you have a different colour tshirt from your friends! Uncontrollable I tell you!

CUSEC also need people to help manage speakers, recruit sponsors, coordinate logistics, publicize the conference and more. 

Get in touch: info@cusec.net.

A few links to blog posts about CUSEC:

Joey De Villa (another).

Leah Culver

Matthew Gallant’s Flickr

Phyllis Lee

Lance

CUSEC 2009 ended.

Write in with your stories! What did you like? What didn’t you like? We’ll do a summary post with the best stuff.

Stay tuned for news about how to get involved for CUSEC 2010!

Adrian Thurston is a Ph.D. student at Queen’s University, where he hacks on source transformation systems. His current work focuses on the analysis and manipulation of real-world languages. Many computer languages cause trouble for the grammar-based generalized parsers that are normally used in generic transformation systems. His current project, Colm, is a new transformation system that will solve this problem. Adrian is also the creator of Ragel, a software development tool that allows for the embedding of arbitrary code into statically compiled regular expressions. It can be described as a regular language parser generator; as such it can be used to make very fast parsers. Adrian did his Master’s degree also at Queen’s and his Undergraduate degree at the University of Waterloo.

Abstract: A talk on what Ragel can do for you and what it requires of you for effective use.

Slides: click here

 

 Creating fast, maintainable and secure parsers with Ragel [50:10m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

You’ve been warned.